Actually, captioning from 1080p would require insignificant resources compared to restreaming. If there is no encoding, there is no significant CPU load. But let me go a step further.

There are two types of restreaming. One with re-encode, and one without where the packets are simply copied from input to output. The people at restream.io worked this out, and provide their service for free at 1080p. How? They made an architectural decision to not re-encode for free level services.

Being the geek that I am, I built my own restreaming service that I use for my own purposes, and it works like a charm. Load on CPU and memory is insignificant when doing 1080 compared to 720, as long as you can live with the compromise of no re-encoding. Each time I broadcast now, I am sending to Youtube, Facebook, Twitter/Periscope, Twitch, dLive, SmashCast, and Mixer.

One outbound feed from Wirecast, and it is split up into multiple services in the cloud. Whats even better is that by using a no re-encode setup, I am able to run the whole thing in a very small virtual machine on existing infrastructure. The only semi-complicated aspect is Facebook, which requires an additional app called "stunnel" to convert a RTMP stream into RTMPS which as we know is mandatory for facebook. But even that is low load. Just sending a RTMP feed via a loopback locally and encrypting. Works a charm.

So. Back to the point. Telestream could absolutely do 1080p, if they did not re-encode without significant additional cost. Only bandwidth would change. Everything else should work just fine. And if bandwidth was really a concern, work out a pricing model that does 1080p at a different pricing rate. Easy.

Jens Jarke could you point me in the right direction? We're in need of automatic captioning for live events at a price comparable to Wirecast Captions. We do not need restreaming. We haven't had a lot of luck finding anything.

Too easy mate. Take a look at webcaptioner. it works like a charm in vMix and support a ton of languages. I haven't tried with Wirecast to be honest. But it should give you a hint or idea. Or install vMix (60 day trial) as well and go out via NDI into Wirecast or skip the Wirecast part. It depends what you like more.

Boxcast and Vimeo are providing live captions as well if you go with them as service providers.

Webcaptioner provides open captions. We are looking for closed captions. I can't find any info about Vimeo providing live closed captions. I have set up a meeting with Boxcast to get more info, but it looks expensive.

Yes, it looks like we will be switching to Boxcast until Wirecast can catch up. Wirecast is very capable software that just seems to fall short for us here. Thank you Jens Jarke for your help, I somehow hadn't come across Boxcast yet.